


constant

by kira_katrine



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family, Gen, Mental Time Travel, Time Travel, Time Travel Works Like 'The Constant' Episode of LOST, Unstuck In Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29006607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_katrine/pseuds/kira_katrine
Summary: Spock is unstuck in time. Michael thinks she has the solution.Written for Past Imperfect Future Unknown 2021.
Relationships: Michael Burnham & Spock
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: Past Imperfect Future Unknown 2020





	constant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleRaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/gifts).



“What did they do to him?”

Michael looked down at the unconscious form of her brother on the biobed. She thought back over the events of the past days, trying to figure out what had changed. She’d gone to Vulcan--Amanda had shown her where Spock was--he clearly wasn’t all right, something had been very wrong even then, but he wasn’t like this--and he wasn’t like that when he’d been rescued from Section 31, either--

And then, he’d suddenly collapsed. She'd gotten him back to Discovery, and here they were.

“I don’t think this is Section 31’s work,” Pollard said. “If it had been, there wouldn’t be much of anything I could do for him. Looks more like he’s in a state of temporal flux.”

“Temporal flux?” Michael asked, but before Pollard could say anything, she heard a noise from the biobed.

“Where am I?” It was Spock’s voice.

“Spock!” Michael said. “Thank goodness you’re awake.” 

“Michael?” Spock said. He sounded confused. “Is that you?”

“Of course it’s me,” Michael said. _Why isn’t he sure about that?_

“You’re… older,” Spock said. “But I suppose that’s not unexpected.”

“What do you mean?” Michael asked. _Temporal flux… was this somehow Spock from another time? How far back must he be from?_

“Something strange has been happening,” said Spock. “I was back home--and then I saw something above me, something like a winged person, glowing and red--”

“The Red Angel,” Michael whispered. But Spock would know what that was. He wouldn’t be talking about it like this. Unless--

Michael remembered what Amanda had said--about how Spock didn’t always process time the same way as everyone else. She was starting to have some idea what might be going on.

“And what happened next?” she asked him.

“Then I was somewhere completely different,” he said. “Our mother and father were there, but they looked older, and so did I. After some time, I concluded that I had traveled forward in time, and was in the body of my future self.”

“After some time?” Michael asked. “How long has this been going on?” 

“I am not sure,” said Spock. “It is difficult to tell when my mind keeps jumping back and forth from one time to the other. But this place is unfamiliar still, and you did not answer my question. Where am I?”

“You’re on board a Starfleet vessel,” Michael said. “In its sickbay. We’ve got great people looking after you, and--”

“A human vessel,” Spock said.

“Yes,” Michael said. “But we’ll take care of you just as well as anyone would on Vulcan.” 

Spock nodded. “I know _you_ will.”

“I’m no expert in temporal mechanics,” Doctor Pollard said. “And I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.”

“When I went to Vulcan to find him, my mother mentioned that he has a neurological condition--l’tak terai, she called it? And it interferes with his processing of linear time. Could that be related?”

“Possibly,” Pollard said. “This condition--would it be something he’s had all his life?”

“I think so,” Michael said. “He had it as a child. Mother said he got it from her?”

“But this, this jumping back and forth like he is now--has that ever happened before?”

“Not that I know of,” Michael said, though she realized there was a lot she didn’t know about her brother’s life. A lot she’d missed.

“Then there may be some other factor,” Pollard said. “Something else that’s triggered this, specifically, right now. And it’d be a lot easier to find out what it might be if we could speak to him, the current him, the next time he surfaces.”

Michael wasn’t sure how to say that she wasn’t sure he’d want to speak to her, even if he could. “You said you went to consult with the science department?” Michael asked instead. “I know Stamets has had some unique experiences with time--did he know anything?”

“I told them all what I know, and they're going to try and come up with something to stop Spock’s temporal jumps,” said Pollard. “But it’ll have to be fast.”

“What do you mean?” Michael asked, a feeling of dread coming over her.

“Spock’s vital signs are degrading, the longer he’s like this,” Pollard explained. “If it isn’t stopped soon, he won’t make it.”

Michael’s heart sank. “Is there anything that can be done to buy us more time?”

“There might be one thing,” Pollard said. “It might make him more stable if he could find a constant. Something, or someone, who would be there both now and in whatever time he keeps jumping back to.”

Of course. That all made sense--why this wasn’t happening when he was on Vulcan, why it only started once they’d left. 

And, of course, her arrival had ruined everything. If she hadn’t shown up, Sarek wouldn’t have followed them, wouldn’t have found out where Spock was. Section 31 would never have gotten ahold of him and he wouldn’t be on Discovery. Wouldn’t be dying.

But maybe--maybe this was something Michael could fix.

“Michael.”

It sounded more like Spock’s normal voice. “Spock?” Michael said. “Is that you? The older you, I mean.”

“Yes.”

“Welcome back,” Michael said. “I--”

“Why have you brought me here?”

“To fix whatever’s going on with you,” Michael said. “I couldn’t just leave you like--”

“There is nothing you can do for me,” Spock said. “Return me to Vulcan.”

“We can’t,” Michael said. “We’re on the run from Section 31. _You_ are on the run. If they catch you, they’ll completely destroy your mind.”

“Perhaps you ought not to have interfered,” said Spock. “At least, at our parents’ home, I was able to stabilize myself within the timeline.”

“Doctor Pollard and the engineering crew are trying to come up with a more long-term and comprehensive solution,” Michael said. “But until then, there is another way to return to the strategy you came up with.”

“How, then, if you cannot return me to Vulcan?”

“I can help you,” Michael said. “Let me. Please. Being with our mother helped because she could serve as a constant--that’s something that can help in these kinds of cases--”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “What cases? I was told my case was unique, is it not?”

“But you said yourself that Amanda’s presence did help,” said Michael. “She can’t be here now--but I am. Please, Spock, I can--”

“No,” said Spock. “You cannot be my constant, Michael. The Michael Burnham who I believed present in the time I revisited is unrecognizable to me now.”

Spock gasped, his eyes rolled back. The console next to him started beeping wildly. “Doctor Pollard!” Michael called.

The doctor rushed back to them. “He’s time-warping again,” Pollard said. “There’s not really anything I can do.”

Michael stared at her brother, unwilling to just let this go on. “What if I could go back with him?”

“ _What_?” Pollard said. “What if the same thing happens to you?”

“My brother’s neurology has likely made him particularly vulnerable to whatever this is,” Michael said. “But that doesn’t apply to me, as I don’t have the same condition. I should be able to handle this.” Pollard still looked skeptical. “Doctor Pollard, what other choice do we have?”

“I suppose we can try a neural link,” Pollard said. “And I will monitor your vitals, and will pull you out as soon as anything looks like it might go wrong. No buts, Burnham.”

Michael nodded. She couldn’t really have expected Pollard to say otherwise.

“All right, then,” Pollard said. She took a small silver disc from a shelf. “If we’re going to do this… lay down here.” She gestured towards the bio bed next to Spock’s.

Michael did as she was told. She lay back, unwilling to let herself wonder if this was a terrible idea. It didn’t matter. She had no others.

Pollard pressed the neural link to her temple. It activated with a slight click.

“See you on the other side,” Michael said.

Pollard gave her a look. “Let’s hope so.”

She was standing in the woods, heart still pounding from what she knew her younger self had just experienced. Running as far as she could get, away from her new family. Away from Spock--and the shock of seeing him anyway. The realization that she should have expected this, him standing there, eyes wide, staring up at her. She didn’t even know what she’d just said to him. If it was too late already.

“Let’s go home,” she said. “Please.” _Please, let it not be too late._

Spock looked puzzled. “You just said you were going,” he said. “That you--” He hesitated. “That you didn’t want--that you did not want a freak like me as a brother. Those were your words.”

She hadn’t said the worst of it yet. There was that much, at least. At that point, Spock had still been trying to change her mind. Maybe there was hope.

“That’s not true,” said Michael.

“You did say it,” Spock said. “I heard you.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Michael. “I know I did--and I’m so sorry, Spock, and I didn’t mean it.”

“Then why did you say it?”

Michael tried to find the words to explain, while keeping things appropriate, not dumping everything she was and had been going through on this small child. “You’ve been having strange experiences today, haven’t you,” Michael said.

Spock nodded. “I met someone. She looked a bit like you, and she said she was you. And I had reason to believe her.”

“Well, you’re right,” Michael said. 

“But how can you know?” Spock asked.

“Spock, I’m not the Michael you know,” she said. “I came here from somewhere else. I followed you.”

“You… followed me?” Spock said. “But I followed you.”

“To this place, yes,” said Michael. “But I followed you to this time. Because it was the only way I could think of to save your life and because--” _Because what happens here, today, is one of the greatest regrets of my life._ “Because I love you, Spock. You are so, so important to me and you have to know that. You have to know me. For this to work, you have to know _me_.”

Spock stared at her. “You sound… human.”

“I am human,” Michael said. “That’s all I’ll ever be. And sometimes I say things that aren’t very logical, Spock. Things that aren’t true, even.”

Spock seemed to consider that for a moment. “What did you mean, save my life?” he asked.

“It was supposed to keep you here. In the time where you belong,” Michael said. “I had to let you know you could count on me.”

“Count on you for what?”

“To be there,” she said. _That’s what he needed,_ she realized. Not to be protected from her, or even really by her--but to have her there. Someone who understood what it was not to be accepted.

She remembered one of the things he’d recited to himself when she found him on Vulcan, desperately trying to ground himself within his reality. “Remember the book Mother reads to us?” Spock nodded. “How did that passage go again--Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly,” she said. Spock joined in as they said the next line. “For she had plenty of time as she went down to wonder--”

“--what was going to happen next.”

Michael’s eyes snapped open. She was back in sickbay. Back on Discovery.

Immediately, she looked over to her right. Spock was lying still on the other bed.

“Well, look who’s back,” Pollard said. 

“What happened?” Michael said. “How is he?”

“He seems to be stable,” Pollard said. “Relatively speaking, of course. For now.”

Michael felt tears come to her eyes as she let out a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness,” she whispered.

She sat up in the biobed. “Spock?” She got up, ignoring Pollard muttering to herself about patients always wanting to leave as soon as they possibly could.

Spock’s eyes were open. “I seem to remember two versions of events,” he said. “This was not the case before.”

“You mean--”

“Our encounter the night you ran away, yes.”

“So do I,” Michael said. But nothing else she remembered seemed to have changed. She didn’t suddenly remember the intervening years differently, or find fond memories with Spock that she’d never experienced before, their estrangement vanished into the air. She knew she couldn’t have hoped it would be that simple. That hadn’t been her reason for doing what she did--but perhaps part of her had hoped.

“I suspect it would be unproductive to choose one as what truly happened,” Spock said. “They both happened, between you and myself. And your insistence on doing what you believe best for me truly is constant.”

“This was mine to fix,” Michael said. 

“You cannot erase the past,” Spock said.

“I know,” Michael said. _Oh, how well I know._ “All I can do is try to learn from it. And hope that it will be enough.”

“And perhaps,” said Spock, “it will be.”


End file.
